An Introduction to Acoustic Ecology
Sound is incredibly important in communicating mood, meaning, and context.
Your level of awareness of the acoustic environment at any given time is an issue central to the inter-discipline of acoustic ecology, which suggests that we try to hear the acoustic environment as a musical composition and that we are responsible for its composition.
R. Murray Schafer, musician and composer, founded the concept and philosophy. He noted the incredible dominance of the visual modality in society. Eye culture reveals that children’s ability to listen is deteriorating. He argued passionately for listening skills to become an integral part of the national curriculum. He termed these listening skills “sonological competence”. Practical exercises such as listing environmental sounds that you remember hearing on a particular day revealed that many students could not recall having heard any sounds during the day and many cannot complete a five pronged sound list even after 15 minutes. The antidote to this problem was to develop a range of your cleaning exercises such as sound walks. The walking meditation has the goal of maintaining a high level of sonic awareness.
Sounds that are particularly regarded by community and it’s visitors are called “sound marks” – in analogy to landmarks. Natural examples can include waterfalls and wind traps, well cultural examples include bells or the sound of traditional activities.
The sound of a particular locality can express a communities’ identity that to the extent that the settlement can be recognized and characterized by their soundscape. Unfortunately, since the Industrial Revolution, an ever increasing number of unique soundscapes have disappeared completely into the cloud of homogenized, anonymous noise that is a contemporary city soundscape.
There is a huge contrast between pre-industrial and postindustrial acoustic environments.
The preindustrial soundscape could extend for many miles. Thus, sounds enemating from the listeners own community may be heard at a considerable distance, reinforcing a sense of space and position and maintaining a relationship with Home. The sense is further strengthened when it is possible to hear sounds ensnaring from adjacent settlements, establishing and maintaining relationships between local communities.
In a post industrial soundscape meaningful sound can be masked to such an extent that an individual’s “aural space” is reduced. Where the effect is so pronounced that an individual can no longer hear the reflected sound of their own movement or speech, aural space has effectively shrunk to include the individual, isolating the listener from the environment.
The pre-industrial soundscape is balanced in terms of level, spectra and rhythm. The post industrial soundscape features an almost constant level creating a “sound wall”, which isolates the listener from the environment. Due to the 24 hour society, the rhythms of daily routine are, in some localities, significantly eroded.
Sound is the mediator between listener and the environment.
As the soundscape deteriorates, so awareness of the subtleties of environmental sound has withered in proportion. as a result, the meaning sounds hold for the listener in contemporary soundscapes tends to be polarized into extremes, like loud and quiet, or good or bad. Compare this level of sonic awareness with the Kaluli men of Papa New Guinea who, according to Feld, can “imitate the sound of at least 100 birds, but if you can provide visual descriptive information on nearly that many.”
Networks, transmitters, and satellites extend the acoustic community across the entire planet, a fact that has been utilized for fair deeds and foul Schafer refers to latter use of sound as “sound imperialism”.
A 1966 report noted that “councils receive 300 complaints about unacceptable noise from neighbors”, and more disturbingly “over the past four years 18 people have been killed due to disputes over noisy neighbors”.
The psychological significance of sound used as a controlling force is that the environment and the community become the enemy. As with any war, the environment becomes a battleground and suffers as much as it inhabitants. Schafer estimated that the battle between sonic expression in control was helping to increase environmental sound levels annually.
The use of sound as a sound wall to block the unceasing inner dialogue and uncomfortable emotions the dialogue evinces provides illusion of mastery over emotion. The psychological and physical cost of an unexpressed emotion is an epidemic of stress related illnesses that reflect a struggle to adapt to a new way of living.
As the city represents excitement, so the countryside has come for many to represent boredom and a disconnection from life. “Life” has become associated with continuous noise and activity. Being “in touch” with the noise of opinion and technology becomes more valuable, well the quiet reality of how an individual feels can be devalued or ignored.
The pre industrial soundscape represents a deep psychological fear for anyone whose purpose is to avoid their feelings. Being quiet tends to bring emotions to the surface.
There are two ways to improve the soundscape. The first is to increase sonological competence through an education program that attempts to imbue students with an appreciation of environmental sound. This will foster a new approach to design, that will incorporate an appreciation of sound and thus reduce the wasted energy that noise represents.
The value of listening and the quality of the soundscape our values worth evangelizing. We should not underestimate the enormity of the task in the face of the busiest, loudest century in recorded history.